Andrew Sullivan - Blogging

Blogging

In late 2000, Sullivan began his blog, The Daily Dish. By the middle of 2003, it was receiving about 300,000 unique visits per month. Between starting his blog and ending his New Republic editorship, Sullivan wrote two works on homosexuality, arguing for its social acceptance on libertarian grounds. His writing appears in a number of widely-read publications. He currently serves as a columnist for The Sunday Times of London.

The core principles of Sullivan's blog have been the style of conservatism he views as traditional. This includes fiscal conservatism, limited government, and classic libertarianism on social issues. Sullivan opposes government involvement with respect to sexual and consensual matters between adults, such as the use of marijuana and prostitution. Sullivan believes recognition of same-sex marriage is a civil-rights issue but is willing to promote it on a state-by-state legislative federalism basis, rather than trying to judicially impose the change. Most of Sullivan's disputes with other conservatives have been over social issues, such as these, and the handling of postwar Iraq.

Sullivan gives out "awards" each year on various public statements that parody those of people the awards are named after. Throughout the year, "nominees" for these awards are mentioned in various blog posts. The readers of his blog vote the "winner" at the end of the year. These awards include:

• the Hugh Hewitt Award, introduced in June 2008 and named after a man Sullivan describes as an 'absurd partisan fanatic', is for the most egregious attempts to label 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as un-American, alien, treasonous, and far out of the mainstream of American life and politics.
• the John Derbyshire Award is for egregious and outlandish comments on gays, women, and minorities.
• the Paul Begala Award is for extreme liberal hyperbole.
• the Michelle Malkin Award is named after blogger Michelle Malkin. It is for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric. (Ann Coulter is ineligible for this award so that, in Sullivan's own words, "Other people will have a chance.")
• the Michael Moore Award is named after film-maker Michael Moore. It is for divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric.
• the Matthew Yglesias Award is for writers, politicians, columnists or pundits who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe.
• the "Poseur Alert" is awarded for passages of prose that stand out for pretension, vanity and really bad writing designed to look like profundity.
• the Dick Morris Award (formerly the Von Hoffman Award) is for stunningly wrong cultural, political and social predictions. Sullivan renamed this award in September 2012, saying that Von Hoffman was "someone who in may ways got the future right - at least righter than I did."

In February 2007, Sullivan took his blog from TIME to the Atlantic Monthly magazine, where he had accepted an editorial post. Since then, his presence has increased traffic by 30% for Atlantic's website.

In 2009, The Daily Dish won The 2008 Weblog Award for Best Blog.

In April 2010, Sullivan was reported to be considering giving up his blog. However, Sullivan stated that he would continue blogging if he could obtain an extra staffer.

Sullivan left The Atlantic to begin blogging at The Daily Beast in April 2011.

On 2 July 2012, Sullivan published the official "coming out" of Anderson Cooper, after receiving permission from Cooper to do so.